River of Doubt: ALIVE Book Review

April 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment


Teddy Roosevelt was a real renaissance man – naturalist, politician, writer, explorer, soldier and cowboy. At home in the White House as well as in the Dakota Badlands or on African Safari, Roosevelt had a big personality and an uncommon zest for life.
Because of his bigger-than-life personality, many biographies have been written on him including the excellent Theodore Rex and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. But I discovered a book written on a little known part of T.R.’s life called The River of Doubt by Candice Millard. Part presidential history, part natural history and part adventure story, this is fact more thrilling than fiction.

After narrowly losing the 1912 election to Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt embarks on an Indiana Jones-like trip to South America to ease his political heartbreak. The pinnacle of the trip for Roosevelt is an exploratory canoe ride down a recently discovered 600 mile tributary of the Amazon River called the River of Doubt. In a time where the Amazon jungle was largely undiscovered it was considered extremely dangerous.

Roosevelt, along with his sensitive son Kermit (who T.R. wants to toughen up), the famous Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon and others set off for the adventure of their lives. Quickly finding themselves woefully unprepared with boats too large and food that is too heavy and cumbersome, the party encounters terrible rapids, starvation, hostile Indians, disease, mutiny and drowning. At one point the famous tough guy Roosevelt is so riddled with fatigue and disease he wants the rest of the explorers to leave him for dead. The story is also about perseverance, sacrifice, team-work and survival.

The book is well-written and well-researched. Millard gives detailed explanations of rainforest ecology, the culture of the native Indians and the American political climate of the time, interspersed with a great adventure that zips the story along. It is exactly what I love in a good book: the ability to give the reader knowledge and entertain at the same time.

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Filed Under: April 2011, Archives, Column

ALIVE Book Review: The Grimm Legacy

March 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Grimm Legacy starts when a quiet, studious, teenage girl named Elizabeth Rew gets a recommendation from her social studies teacher to work as a page at the New York Circulating Materials Repository. It is a library that lends objects instead of books. Elizabeth may not fit in very well at school or at home with her new stepmom and stepsisters, but at the library she finds a glorious and welcoming world. The description of the regular objects are fascinating enough, like Marie Antoinette’s wig, but there is a secret collection of magical objects like dancing slippers and mermaid combs from Grimm’s fairy tales that only special patrons can check out.

This is where things get really interesting. The descriptions and use of the magical objects combined with the relationships between the four teenage pages make for a great story. When magical items start disappearing and everyone is suspect, it makes the story move along swiftly.

Author, Polly Shulman is incredibly inventive and creative throughout the book and makes the reader race through to see what happens next. She does a great job of weaving fantasy with the lives of modern day teenagers. The characters seem real enough that many teenagers could identify with them. Also, the lead character, Elizabeth, is a good role model with her strong moral courage and integrity throughout the book.

This book is also different because it is really written for a middle school audience but teenagers would certainly enjoy it and adults as well. There aren’t many books out there for this age group and it is rare to find a really good one. I would recommend it for sixth grade and up because there is a little romance thrown in there with the teenage characters.

The Grimm Legacy is a wonderful book full of magic and whimsy that will entertain kids and their parents alike.

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Filed Under: Archives, Column, March 2011

The Year of Living Biblically: ALIVE Book Review

November 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The Year of Living BiblicallyThe Year of Living Biblically
One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

I’ll admit this is a real stretch from the types of books I normally read and review. Usually I read fiction. To me, reading is a means of escape from the cares of real life. However, this summer when life got especially overwhelming for about a month, I read this book and it cracked me up! I actually laughed out loud which led to questions from my family.

The Year of Living Biblically doesn’t sound funny. Actually it might sound a little boring. The author, A.J. Jacobs, is an agnostic Jew and doesn’t know much about the bible at all. He decides to study the most famous book in the world and follow it as literally as possible for a year. He manages to do so while being brilliantly funny and reverent at the same time.

Meshing Old Testament biblical laws while living as a modern day husband, father and New Yorker is no small feat. He grows a beard, carries a portable stool called a Handy Seat to avoid touching impure things, and blows a ram’s horn at the start of every month. He also buys tassels for his Old Testament garments from “Tassels without Hassles.” Struggling to avoid gossip, covetousness and anger are a constant battle.

Most people think of the Ten Commandments when they think of Biblical Law, but A.J. identifies 800 laws to follow. Some are more well known such as “thou shalt not kill.” Others are more obscure, such as the law against wearing mixed fibers. To avoid breaking this one, he invites a Rabbi Berkowitz to come whose job is to inspect clothing with a magnifying glass
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A.J. tries to follow all the laws, which is of course impossible. He gets various Rabbis and Christian leaders to mentor him and help interpret the laws such as a retired Lutheran minister who calls himself the Pastor out to Pasture. He approaches it all with an open mind. What results is not only funny, but also thought-provoking and enlightening. At the end of his year-long experiment he is a changed man.

I was both entertained and educated by this book which is a pretty unusual combination. I raved about it to everyone and was reading passages out loud to my husband who was laughing hysterically. If you want a book with substance that won’t make you nod off with boredom, this is the one. You’ll be a wiser and much happier person for it.

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Filed Under: Archives, Column, November 2010

Cutting for Stone: ALIVE Book Review

October 7, 2010 by

Alive Book ReviewThere has been much fanfare over the book Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese with just cause. This book runs a big 564 pages and I think I read it in two days. I couldn’t put it down.

It is a sweeping family saga that takes place in both Africa and America and thrills the reader from the first page to the last.

The main characters, twin boys, Marion and Shiva Stone, are born to a beautiful Indian nun and a British surgeon, Thomas Stone. The backdrop is a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where the boys are connected at birth through a blood vessel in their heads and continue to have an almost supernatural closeness through their lives. Due to their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, the twins are taken in by loving foster parents who are both doctors and shape the boys’ destinies to become doctors themselves.

With the Ethiopian revolution in the background, the wrongful imprisonment of their foster father, and entanglements with the same woman, the brothers grow increasingly distant until Marion escapes the betrayal of Shiva and flees to America to practice medicine. In America he is almost destroyed by his life-long love but get help from an unlikely source.

This book was riveting and beautifully written. The characters are masterfully developed and I loved the complex relationship between Marion and Shiva. The author is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and his knowledge and descriptions of surgery and the medical field which run through the book are fascinating. This is the type of book people talk about and press into their friends and relatives’ hands saying, “you have got to read this!” Cutting For Stone leaves a lasting impression and is a journey well worth taking.

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Filed Under: Archives, Column, October 2010

Comfort Food: ALIVE Book Review

September 3, 2010 by

Comfort Food
Comfort Food is a fun novel by Kate Jacobs, author of the bestselling Friday Night Knitting Club. The main character is Augusta “Gus” Simpson who is a well-known hostess and has her own show on the Cooking Channel. After being the top dog for years, her ratings are slipping and the producers want to pair her with an up and coming new Cooking Channel star. Carmen Vega is a former Miss Spain and a decidedly ambitious diva. She and Gus constantly butt heads and their debut live show seems headed for disaster when their guest stars can’t show up.

Quick thinking Gus quickly grabs a motley crew of friends and family in the audience to help her and Carmen cook on air. There are her two slightly dysfunctional daughters, Sabrina and Aimee and Sabrina’s ex-boyfriend Troy. There is Oliver, an ex-financial wizard turned chef and Hannah, an ex-tennis star turned recluse. The mixture of these crazy personalities produces chemistry on air and the show becomes a hit. The rest of the book is a madcap story about what ensues.

Full of yummy descriptions of gourmet meals, Comfort Food is a feast for the senses. The plot has some twists and turns and some of the characters are just plain zany. I loved the relationships between such a different personalities and how they interact. There’s some romance thrown in there and a twist on who gets the girl. It was an altogether enjoyable light read. It is good for reading on the beach or near the pool this summer. If you’re looking for a great escape without the calories, try Comfort Food.

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Filed Under: Archives, Column, September 2010

Little Giant of Aberdeen County

August 5, 2010 by

Little Giant of Aberdeen County

Truly is a woman without a place in the world because of her size. She is huge at birth and never stops growing because of an abnormality in her pituitary gland. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker chronicles Truly’s triumphs and struggles throughout her life in the small town of Aberdeen.

Orphaned at a young age, Truly is stuck with an only sister who is her polar opposite in what the world sees as feminine beauty. Truly has to navigate growing up in Aberdeen with sneers from classmates, disdain from her teacher and unfavorable comparisons to her sister. After their father dies, Truly’s sister, beautiful Serena Jane, grows up in the Vicar’s privileged household and eventually becomes Aberdeen’s pinnacle of society, the May Queen. Truly is relegated to a dilapidated farm owned by the kind but down-on-their-luck Dyersons.

Surprisingly Serena Jane’s seemingly good fortune and beauty become a curse when the town doctor’s son, Robert Morgan, becomes obsessive and marries her. Eventually Serena Jane flees Aberdeen and Truly is left to deal with the broken lives she leaves behind. In doing so, Truly finds a piece of Aberdeen folklore and uncovers long-dead secrets from Robert Morgan’s half-witch half-healer ancestor. Growing ever more adept at the healing arts, Truly has to make difficult moral choices and eventually finds love and acceptance from herself and others.

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County successfully contrasts Truly’s internal beauty with her freakish size. Many people just can’t get past her looks, but those who do, find forgiveness, mercy and a heart to match her size.

The book is a great story full of twists and turns in the plot but has underlying themes that make it thoughtful and provoking. Truly’s moral decisions and their ramifications with those she loves are especially stirring.

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is a unique page-turner with a complex main character and a heart-warming story.

ALIVE Book Review

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Filed Under: Archives, August 2010, Column

The Help

May 7, 2010 by

The HelpSet in the early 1960′s when the Civil Rights Movement was tearing apart the South, The Help by Kathryn Stockett shows the struggle through the eyes of two black maids. Loving Abilene, who raises 17 white children over the years then watches them grow up to join another class and break her heart, or Mouthy Minnie who has been fired numerous times for talking back to her white employers.

These two women only have their voices heard because of Skeeter. She is a Junior Leaguer in Jackson, Mississippi, member of a wealthy family who, unlike all her friends, wants to use her degree to become a writer instead of settling down with marriage and kids. She comes up with the idea of writing a book undercover about the black maids’ lives in Jackson. In an era where a man is blinded for using a “whites only” bathroom, the maids overcome their mistrust of Skeeter and they risk everything to have their stories told.

Skeeter’s best friend is Hilly who is the Queen Bee of Jackson. She is a proponent of what she calls the “bathroom initiative” which is a mission to install black bathrooms in all white homes for the maids, to avoid their “disgusting diseases.” The book shows the journey of Skeeter’s awareness of how the maids feel about this and how attitudes are beginning to change in Jackson.

The Help blends the maids’ internal feelings and thoughts beautifully against what they say and how they act around their white employers. These opposing forces in the maids’ lives and the double life Skeeter has to lead to obtain the maids’ stories are woven throughout, along with the increasingly violent backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement which is spreading throughout
the South.

The beauty of the book is that it deals with the difficult topic of racial prejudice without being preachy and one-sided. While there are villains in the story, both black and white, both races also have redeeming qualities which come through in their relationships with one another. The Help explores how the maids and their white employers have lives that are intertwined yet
separate and has characters that are many-faceted and compelling.

The Help is a wonderful, uplifting story.

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Filed Under: Archives, Column, May 2010